Ride the Dark Trail s-18 Read online

  Siwash wasn't a big town. A man with good legs could walk all around it in five minutes, but you could have done the same thing with the first settlement of Troy, which also was built around a spring and on a trade route.

  The gambler with the rheumatic hands was still there, and his hands were in even worse shape. The hands that could no longer deal one off the bottom or build up a bottom stock couldn't handle a gun either, so the oldest citizen in Siwash was also the most peaceful.

  When Jake Flanner showed up and began quietly taking over the gambler considered shooting him until he saw what happened to several others with the same idea. So he smiled at Jake's stories and kept a gun handy just in case.

  Nevertheless, he harbored no good wishes for Flanner; he wished the man out of there, and not merely because he wanted to be top dog. The gambler's name was Con Wellington, and his hands being what they were he wanted peace. It took no wise man to see that there would never be peace where Jake Flanner was. So Con Wellington waited, listened, and bided his time, and as all things eventually came to him, he knew Flanner had been stopped cold by Emily Talon and Logan Sackett.

  Logan was no stranger. They'd never been friends, had scarcely met, in fact. Logan had once sat in a poker game with Wellington, whose hands were not rheumatic at the time, but Con knew a good deal about Logan Sackett and he dealt his cards with extreme care.

  He was considering some way of getting word to Logan without Flanner's spies telling of it when there was a tap on his window.

  Con's mind worked swiftly. Jake Flanner or his men would come to the front door, hence if somebody came to the window it had to be an enemy of Flanner's, and an enemy of Flanner's was always welcome ... so long as Flanner didn't know about it.

  He opened the window a bare inch. "Who is it?" He was studying the background as he asked the question. It was unlikely anybody would be hiding and watching the back of his store, which was also his dwelling, but he was not a trusting man.

  "Open your door," I said, and heard him mutter something from within. I'd left my horse under the cottonwoods beside the stream and had come on foot to the Wellington store.

  There was a moment of movement within, and then after a bit, a door opened into darkness. "Come in then, and make it quick."

  Once inside, Con Wellington uncovered a lantern. "I had an idea it would be you," he said. "There's nobody else would come to me in the night."

  He sat down on his bed. It was an old four-poster and the springs creaked heavily as Wellington seated himself, leaving the chair for me.

  "It's about Flanner you've come," he said abruptly. "Well, understand me. I don't like the man but he's left me alone. Granted, my business is less than half what it was, but I'm alive, and some are not."

  He opened a cigar box and took one himself before pushing it over to me. He lifted his hands, gnarled and twisted from rheumatism. "I've as much nerve as the next man, I think, but with these nerve doesn't matter. I can pull a trigger if I've plenty of time ... I could still hunt buffalo. But to pull a gun against another man? I'd not have a chance."

  "It isn't a gun you'll need. It's another thing I have in mind."

  Wellington looked at me sharply. "Logan, you've tied in with Em Talon ... what's in that for you?"

  "We're kinfolk. She was a Clinch Mountain Sackett before she married Talon."

  "A Clinch Mountain Sackett may mean something to you. It doesn't to me."

  "It means little to anybody but us," I told him. "We set store by kinfolk. We've our troubles, time to time, but when one of us is in danger, there'll be help from any who are around."

  Wellington lit his cigar. "I wish my folks were like that. They were glad to be rid of me. My family had money, education, pride of family. So when I lost my money and got into difficulties they threw me out."

  "It happens." I lit my cigar, too. It was a good one. "I had a hunch," I said, "that you didn't care for Flanner. Now I want you to stand aside."

  "No more?"

  "I'm gettin' tired of him. So's Em. Her son's comin' home but he may take a time gettin' here and I want action. I'm goin' to run him out."

  "You? And who else?"

  "I don't need nobody else. I figured you would know who his friends were. I don't aim to hurt innocent bystanders if it can be helped."

  He looked at me, long and thoughtful, and then he said, "You know, I think you might do it." He looked at the long ash on his cigar, then very carefully knocked it off on the edge of his saucer. "Most of the people here don't like him, but right now there's not more than twenty to twenty-five people in town aside from Flanner and his men."

  He named them for me, told me where they were likely to be, described a few of them. "The hotel, saloon, and livery stable, and the bunkhouse back of the stable, that's where most of his boys will be. Flanner sticks close to the hotel."

  "How about that other one?"

  "Johannes Duckett?" Wellington squinted his eyes. "He might be anywhere. He might be outside this minute. He moves around like a ghost."

  He paused a moment. "Don't belittle the folks here in town. Jake swings a wide loop but he's left them strictly alone. He shows up at the dances, pie suppers, and the like, and he contributes to get the minister to come to town. They don't like him much, but they've little to complain about.

  "They figure his business with the MT is his business. Not many folks around here knew the Talons. They kept to themselves pretty much, and then after the old man was killed Em came to town mighty seldom ... and after a while, not at all.

  "Some of them are jealous. After all, the Talon outfit is big. Most of these folks were latecomers, and none of them realize what it takes to put a big outfit together, especially when the Talons came here."

  "They'll stay out of it then?"

  "I expect so. Naturally, I can promise nothing except for myself."

  What my next step would be I simply did not know. Like I said, I'm not long on planning. I just start moving and let things happen. The only planning I do, you might say, is to see that I don't hurt any innocent bystanders. And that was why I risked my neck to come in and talk to Con Wellington.

  Suddenly I had a hunch. I wasn't going back the way I came in. If this here Johannes Duckett was laying for me it would be out back, so I'd go right out the front door.

  Wellington didn't like it much, but he agreed Duckett might be lying in wait out yonder in the dark, so I went to the front door of the store.

  "If they see me and ask about it, tell them I'm running scared but wanted tobacco. I'm not that much of a smoker, but they don't know that. I've seen men risk their necks for a smoke."

  Wellington took down a couple of sacks of tobacco. "Just in case," he said.

  The door was well oiled, and I slipped out to the boardwalk without a sound. Four long strides and I was across the street, ducking into the space between two buildings. Carefully I worked my way back to my horse.

  When I was crouched down near some stumps, looking through the brush at my horse, I saw a man come out of the trees near the road. He looked left and right, then came on. He saw the horse and I heard him give a muttered exclamation, then he reached over and pulled the slip knot I'd tied in the bridle reins. He gathered the reins and was just throwing a leg over the saddle when I heard a shot.

  The roan jumped and the strange rider toppled from its back into the grass. The roan ran out of there, head high, reins trailing.

  From behind me and to my left there was movement

  I waited, and then a tall, thin man came out of the trees and walked down to the dead man. He struck a match, then swore.

  "Wrong man again, Duckett?" I yelled into the darkness.

  He turned and shot. It was one move, only I had already fired. He had shot at sound and he missed by a hair. My bullet smacked hard against something metallic, then ricocheted off into the night.

  Moving swiftly, I went through the trees, angling toward the road to try to head off my horse.

  There were no
more shots, no sound. The moon was just showing on the trail and there was a smell of dust in the air. I walked along holding to the shadowed side of the trail, and sure enough, about of a quarter of a mile up the road I found the roan. The horse came to me when I spoke, and I petted it and talked to it for a while before stepping into the saddle.

  It was near daybreak when I got back to the ranch.

  Chapter 11

  Pennywell was on the lookout when I came in, and when I got inside she brought me a cup of coffee. "Em's asleep," she said, "catching up on some of that lost time."

  She studied me critically. I looked beat. After I'd caught my horse I'd had to hightail it for the MT, careful to leave no sign they could use, so I'd come right down the trail and through the main gate.

  "Looks like you been out among 'em," she commented. "I frown on that as Em would say."

  Explaining what happened, I added, "The way I figure it, Duckett spotted me when I came in and laid for me near my horse. Meanwhile some other of Flanner's men saw me in town, saw me go into or come out of the store, and got ahead of me, planning to get my horse and then me."

  "But you shot Duckett?"

  "Shot at him. From the sound I must have hit his rifle or a tree near him. I doubt if I did him any harm, but he came within an inch or less of nailing me. That man can shoot, an' Lordy, is he quick!"

  "Teach you to go gallivanting around in the middle of the night. Wait for them to come to you."

  "I'm a poor hand at waitin'. My style is to carry it to them, show them a fight has two sides."

  "Do you think this will do it?"

  "Well," I commented, "I've an idea they'll think twice before they open a door. They know I'm huntin' them, too, and that can be a worrisome thing."

  Two slow days went by while I worked around the place. One day I rode to the hills and shot an elk, bringing the meat down to the place. I also taken my iron out to the meadows, roped and branded a couple of yearlings.

  No work had been done around there for some time and it would be a rustler's dream to get back in there and find all that fine stock wearing no brands. After that I decided to carry an iron with me wherever I went on MT range.

  Johannes Duckett didn't shape up like the kind of man who would sit by and let me get away with shooting at him. I knew I'd be hearing from him, with or without Flanner, and I also figured Duckett would go a-prowling for me. He was the kind who would be apt to shoot from anywhere, so I kept off the skyline, rode through the edge of the trees, kept myself out of range as well as I could when I'd no idea where the attack would come from or when.

  Nonetheless I still had an idea of riding into Siwash and making myself known.

  Em was on the lookout when she seen a rider coming. She turned to me. "Logan? What do you make of him?"

  He was coming down the road at a walk, heading for the main gate. Through the glasses I could see he was riding a beat-up buckskin. He was a small-sized man with a narrow-brimmed hat, a speckled shirt and vest. Light glinted from his eyes so I reckoned him for glasses. He was wearing a six-shooter and he had him a rifle shoved down into a boot

  As he rode up to the gate he suddenly touched a spur to his buckskin and I'll be damned if that horse didn't just sail right over a six-bar gate that was all of five feet tall, and did it with no particular mind, sort of offhand and easy.

  Em, she taken up her Sharps and that ol' gun boomed as she put a bullet right into the dust ahead of him.

  The rider he just taken off his hat, held it high, and waved it down in a low bow. But he kept comin'.

  I hitched my Colt into a better position and walked out front. Nobody else was in sight, and I figured to be all ready for this man, whoever he was.

  He came on up, walking his horse, and about fifty feet off he drew rein and looked at the house. For a long time he looked, then he dropped his eyes to me. One eye was covered with a kind of white film ... I reckon he could only see from one.

  "You'll be Logan Sackett, I expect? I've come here to join you."

  "What for?"

  The man did not smile. "The word is that you are about to be run off. Flanner is recruiting fighters. I am Albani Fulbric, and my people have been fighting on the wrong side for a thousand years. I see no reason to change now."

  "Can you fight?"

  "With any weapon ... any one at all."

  "Well, it's gettin' on to supper time. Come in an' set and we'll talk it over."

  He was an odd man with an odd name, but somehow I liked the cut of him. At table he showed himself a fair hand at putting away grub, although in size he wasn't more than two-thirds of me.

  "Where'd you get a name like that?" I asked him.

  "Names are how you look at 'em. My name is funny to you, yours is funny to me. Sackett - ever listen to the sound of that? Think on it, my friend."

  He reached for the beef. "Now you take my name. My folks, both sides of them, come over from Normandy with William the Conqueror. One of them was squire to Sir Hugh de Malebisse and the other rode with Robert de Brus.

  "Neither one of them had anything but strong arms and the willingness to use them. One was an Albani, one a Fulbric, and you will find their names in the Doomsday Book. Bold men they were and we who follow their steps are proud to bring no shame to the names they left us."

  "They were knights?" Pennywell asked.

  "They were not. They were simple men, smiths and the like, between wars. One of them settled in Yorkshire with Sir Hugh, and the other went off to Scotland, hard by. And one of the family later helped to put a Bruce on the throne of Scotland, although a lot of good it did either of them."

  I knew nothing of foreign wars or foreign parts, and the talk when not of horses and cattle or buffalo or guns was scarcely easy for me to follow, but there was a lilt to his voice like he was speaking of magic, and I liked to hear what he was saying. The names meant nothing to me, nothing at all.

  "I've heard those names," Em Talon said. "Talon spoke of them. His family came from France, and by all accounts a roistering lot they were, building ships and sailing them to foreign parts, and more often than not on voyages of piracy. It's a wonder they weren't hanged."

  "Are you a hand with cattle?" I asked him.

  "I am that. I'll handle a rope with any man, and my horse is good with cattle. I'll earn my keep and whatever it is you'll pay."

  "That horse you see me riding has been hard used, but don't look down upon him. He's carried me into and out of much trouble, and time and again we've been to the wars. Let me put a loop over anything that walks, and that buckskin will hold it, whatever it is."

  "In the saddle of that horse I'd not be afraid to rope a Texas cyclone, rope and hog-tie it, too. He'll climb where it would put scare into a mountain goat, and one time when a man holed me with a Winchester slug, he carried me fifteen miles through the snow, then pawed on the stoop until folks came to the door to take me down."

  "You can call me a dog if you will, sir, but you speak ill of my horse and I'll put lead into you."

  "I'd never speak ill of any man's horse," I said sincerely. "I've ridden his kind, and we've a few fit to run with him right here on the Empty."

  If Albani was a fair hand at the table he was a better one in the field. We turned to and roped and branded fourteen head the following morning, cleaned out a waterhole where there'd been a slide, and checked out the grass on the upper meadows. He was a handy man with tools and not backward about using them, but I was wary. He'd not said much about himself beyond running off at the head about those old ancestors of his who came over ... from where I wasn't sure. I'd never heard of Normandy until Pennywell, who reads a lot of books, told me it was in France and that the Normans were originally called Northmen or Vikings, and they'd settled in there where the country looked good. Well, that made sense. Most of us who came west were wishful of the same thing.

  Al - as we came to call him - was as good at working on fences, too, and we tightened up the wire where it was needed, replace
d a few rotting posts, and branded more cattle in the next few days. He'd been working up Montana way and in the Dakotas and had first come west from Illinois, working on the railroad, building at first, then as a switchman.

  It was the sort of story every man had to tell them days. Men moved often and turned their hand to almost anything, developing the knacks for doing things. Most men were handy with tools - their lives demanded it of them - and most men worked at a variety of jobs, usually heading toward a piece of land of their own. Some made it, some never did. In any bunkhouse you'd find men from a dozen states or territories, and men who had worked at dozens of jobs, doing whatever was needed to earn a living.

  Most of them were young, and the younger they were the harder they worked to be accepted as men. No boy over fourteen wanted to be thought of as a boy ... he wanted to be considered a man and a top hand at whatever he was doing.

  The first thing he learned was to do his part. Nobody had any use for a shirker or a lay-around ... it just made more work for the others, and such a one became almighty unwelcome awful fast. On the other hand, nobody asked who you were or where you came from, only that you stood up when there was something to be done.

  Nobody thought of horses except as companions and working partners. The value of a horse in terms of money wasn't often mentioned. You'd hear a man say, "He's a damn' fine cuttin' horse." Or maybe, "He'll go all night an' the next day. Stays right in there." Or, "That's the horse I rode when I tied onto that brindle steer that time, an' ..."

  You hear folks say how horses were rough used on old-time ranches, but it ain't so. At least, they used them no worse than they used themselves, and usually a whole sight better. You'll hear folks say that horses are stupid, but they ain't if you give them a chance. A horse is like a dog ... he needs to belong to somebody, to be trusted by somebody. Once they know what's expected of them they'll come through.

  There was no word from Milo Talon, and I lay awake nights wondering what Flanner would do next. Me an' Em talked it over at breakfast, with Al Fulbric putting in his two cents' worth. The result was that I got out a team that had once been broke to harness, hitched them to a plough, and then went out and ploughed a firebreak twelve furrows wide just below the crest of the hill that divided us from town. It taken several days, but I got it done, and Al ploughed some on the other side.